His face twisted. “Don’t call me that. It's D now.”
I didn't miss the way his eyes darted frantically aroundthe hall, checking to see if anyone overheard. Was he ashamed of the fact that he once allowed me to know him that well? As if we didn’t live together, right across the hall from each other. I heard him showering, brushing his teeth, and taking a leak. God forbid someone heard me use the name he used to let slip out between laughter and breathless late-night secrets.
“D?” I asked. “That's fucking stupid.”
As if he was too cool for an entire name, and he was down to one letter now. Maybe he'd ditch the consonants altogether and adopt a symbol as his name, like Prince did.
I hitched my backpack up on my shoulder and started down the hall, hoping he would disappear or lose interest. He followed, close enough that I could smell his body spray. Just not close enough to make it look like what it was—an obsession.
“Are you going to answer me?” he snapped, “or let me assume the worst?”
I stopped walking and spun around.Fuck you. Fuck you for making me even say it.“You already do, so what’s the difference?” He knew damn well it was a lie.
I could feel people watching us now, lingering just far enough away to pretend they weren’t eavesdropping, but close enough to hang on every word.
I hate you so fucking hard. The Darien I used to know would never humiliate me like this.
“If Ididwant to suck someone’s dick,” I said slowly, carefully, every syllable dipped in venom, “it wouldn’t be yours.”
He shoulder-checked me on the way past, not bothering tohide his malice.
“We both know that’s not true,” he hissed, so close I felt his breath on my ear.
I stood frozen in the hallway, throat tight, vision stinging.
I loathed confrontation. That churn of adrenaline in my gut. The electric wrongness of being seen too much and not enough all at once.
Every time I came face to face with Dare, I felt it again, like stepping onto thin ice and waiting for the crack. He looked at me like I was filth. As if I’d committed some unspeakable betrayal. Or that I was something he had to scrape off the bottom of his shoe.
And the worst part? The silence afterward. Because I knew that silence. I’d lived in it for years. It was the space between us that used to hold secrets and jokes and summer nights and promises sealed in piss and spit.
Now it held nothing but shame, disgust, and loneliness so deep it echoed.
I watched him walk away, laughing too loudly with his new friends. That wasn’t his real laugh. It didn’t reach his eyes. I used to know his real smile.
Used to.
Now I didn’t know what made me sadder, that I’d been the only one to ever see it, or that it was gone forever. And somehow, I still missed him. Even when all he did was ruin me.
My sneakers squeaked on the linoleum as I rounded the corner toward my class, lungs burning for air, heart aching in ways an A+ on my math quiz couldn’t fix.
At the back of the room, Amira had already claimed her usual corner table. Her braid slid over one shoulder as she bentover her notes, highlighter cap tucked between her teeth. She glanced up the second I walked in, her sharp eyes softening in a way that made me want to collapse.
“What happened?” she asked without hesitation.
I dropped into the chair across from my best friend and shook my head. “Nothing.”
She snorted. “Bullshit.”
But she didn’t push. Just slid a granola bar across the table like it was medicine and turned back to her notes. That small act of kindness made something squeeze behind my ribs. She was a good friend. The kind of person who notices things. Who made space for you to fall apart without needing to know the full story.
But she wasn’t him. And no matter how hard she tried, she never could be.
It wasn’t just his absence that hurt or his air of cruel indifference. It was the idea that he looked at me now and saw something wrong.
Tainted.
Less than.
